Monthly Archives: May 2015

In a recent article in Semiconductor Engineering, Ann Steffora Mutschler explores examples of architectural strategies for getting the best performance out of a power budget.

Virtual platform developer Imperas Software’s tools are being used for power estimation, to enable dynamic analysis of the impact of the complete software stack – OS, firmware, applications – on the power consumption of SoCs and systems, according to CEO Simon Davidmann. “We have seen various architectures used by our customers with power constraints. What most of these architectures have in common is heterogeneity: using the right processor for the appropriate task.”

He sees the next step in this progression of system architectures as enabling optimized sharing of…

“The disciplines of hardware and software engineering have always been intertwined and symbiotic – like the yin and yang of some bizarre abstract beast. Software cannot exist without hardware to execute it, of course, and most hardware today is designed in the service of software. The vast majority of systems being designed today involve a mix of both elements working together, with software steadily inheriting more and more of the complexity load.

At the DVCon conference in Santa Clara in April, Brian Bailey of Semiconductor Engineering hosted a round table discussion on the state of EDA and the opportunities for new startups to grow and succeed. Imperas CEO and OVP founder, Simon Davidmann was part of the discussion.

Other participants were Bill Neifert, chief technology officer at Carbon Design Systems; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing for Sonics; and Michel Courtoy, vice president of marketing and business development for Kilopass Technology.

The discussion is being reported in 3 posts by Brian. There are links to them below.

In a snippet from the first report, Davidmann said “The goal of the electronic design automation industry is to help people build electronic products. If we look at the people around the table, we have an EDA company, two IP companies and we (Imperas) are really a software company. The industry started off with computer-aided design, and then over time started trying to build automation. We developed technology to help make designers more efficient. The industry trajectory is moving away from design automation. I got involved in an IP company in 1997 because I saw the opportunity to make designers more productive by bringing in pre-verified IP. The best way to improve verification is to bring in something that has already been verified. Now you have a different problem with integrating it. If we consider verification, there has been a dramatic change in this over the past 15 years. It is changing again and will begin to morph into the software space. Ten years ago, I started moving out of traditional EDA, then into IP, then verification and most recently into software. EDA has to find ways to use the skills we have and the methodologies that have been developed and move that into software.”

Imperas shows Virtual Platforms for Software Development and Testing across Multiple IP Vendors and Applications

Oxford, United Kingdom – Imperas Software Ltd., the leader in high-performance software simulation, today announced their participation at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) 2015 and invites attendees to register for a demonstration of Imperas embedded software development, debug and test solutions at the Imperas booth in the exhibition area. Attendees can also register for the tutorial on embedded Linux being delivered by Imperas.

DAC is recognized as the premier conference for Electronic Design Automation (EDA), offering outstanding training, education, exhibits and networking opportunities for designers, researchers, tool developers and vendors. DAC attracts a worldwide community of more than 1,000 organizations, represented by system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, software development engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives, and academicians.

When: June 7-11, 2015.

Where: Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA.

Highlights:

TUTORIALS: Imperas, in partnership with Altera and Posedge, will deliver two tutorials on “Linux Porting and Bring Up, and Linux Driver Development” featuring virtual platforms, as part of the Embedded Software topic in the DAC Embedded Systems track.

Date: Monday, Jun 8, 2015

Times: 10:30am to 12:00pm and again at 4:30pm to 6:00pm

Location: Room 303

DEMOS: See Imperas virtual platform based embedded software debug, analysis and verification demos at the ARM Connected Community booth, #2414 in 3B.

Imperas demos will show the full line of Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) models of ARM processors, including Cortex-A, Cortex-R and Cortex-M families

TALKS: Imperas will deliver two talks on virtual platform based methodology for embedded software development on the show floor in the ARM Connected Community booth theater.

Times: Monday, June 8 at 2:15pm and Tuesday, June 9 at 1:45pm

For more information, or to set up meetings with Imperas at DAC, please email sales@imperas.com
The DAC conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is supported by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA).

About Imperas
Imperas Software is revolutionizing the development of embedded software and systems. Its portfolio of virtual platform solutions enable the efficient development of embedded software through high-level modeling, high-performance simulation and advanced debugging. Imperas’ virtual platform technology compresses software engineering schedules, while improving code quality, and is used at leading communications, automotive, consumer electronics and embedded processor companies worldwide. Imperas was founded in 2008, also founding the Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) consortium to promote open model library availability. It has corporate headquarters near Oxford, UK, with support and sales organizations in Silicon Valley, California and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, see www.imperas.com.

All trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Learn More about Imperas MIPS CPU Virtual Platforms for Software Development and Testing

Oxford, United Kingdom – Imperas Software Ltd., the leader in high-performance software simulation, today announced their participation at the Imagination Summit Silicon Valley 2015 and invites attendees to meet for a demonstration of Imperas™ virtual platform based software development, debug and verification tools.

Imagination Summit Silicon Valley – “Securing the Future” – is a day-long series of presentations, demonstrations and detailed technical sessions with top executives and experts from Imagination Technologies and their partners. Attendees can explore the ultra-low power architectures in Imagination’s SoC processor IP cores and discover security solutions for IoT and other markets.

Imagination will feature their new generation of MIPS Warrior CPUs, which are already supported by Imperas Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) models. Imperas also supports MIPS-based SoC software development through its Extendable Platform Kits (EPKs), which help users to get a quick start with virtual platform methodology, and with tools for software debug, analysis and verification. Imperas will have demos of the full line of MIPS models, as well as the EPKs and the Imperas embedded software tools.

The efforts of the new Security working group in the prpl Foundation will be discussed, and is gaining industry momentum fast, thanks to members such as Imperas.
For more information, or to set up meetings with Imperas, please email larryl@imperas.com

When: May 21 2015Where: Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara, CA.

About Imperas
Imperas Software is revolutionizing the development of embedded software and systems. Its portfolio of virtual platform solutions enable the efficient development of embedded software through high-level modeling, high-performance simulation and advanced debugging. Imperas’ virtual platform technology compresses software engineering schedules, while improving code quality, and is used at leading communications, automotive, consumer electronics and embedded processor companies worldwide. Imperas was founded in 2008, also founding the Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) consortium to promote open model library availability. It has corporate headquarters near Oxford, UK, with support and sales organizations in Silicon Valley, California and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, see www.imperas.com.

All trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.